High gas prices and a delay in the renewal of an annual state contract for making license plates caught up with the Reno County tag office this month as it ran out of both motorcycle and veteran's plates.

Wednesday

Aug 27, 2008 at 12:01 AMAug 27, 2008 at 6:00 PM

John Green - The Hutchinson News - jgreen@hutchnews.com

"We are out of motorcycle tags, and we don't know when we'll get more," said Reno County Treasurer Clark Miller. "We've gone through 50 of them in the past two weeks. We've begged and borrowed from other counties, but we can't get more. The state says they will send us more, but I can't give you an answer on when we'll get them."

The tag shortage has been an issue in some parts of the state since April, said Bonnie Brown, administrative specialist with the office of the director of the Division of Motor Vehicles, but officials have tried to deal with it by asking counties with extra plates to send them to others without.

"Basically, there's been twice as many registrations for motorcycles than normal," Brown said. "We go by the previous year as far as how much stock to have on hand, and we always try to pad it by 5 to 10 percent."

When the state made its annual tag order, however, gas prices hadn't reached current prices and officials didn't anticipate the resulting demand from motorists switching to more fuel-efficient transport.

Adding to the problem was a delay in the annual contract renewal with Center Industries in Wichita, which manufactures all the license plates for the state.

"We start the process almost six months in advance," Brown said, "but a lot of things changed because of the Real ID Act, for safety and security reasons. The verbiage in the contract had to change and it took longer than it normally would."

That delayed the start of production for the year.

Since only one company makes the state's plates, it couldn't shift production on standard car tags to motorcycle tags or the more specialized plates, such as the veteran's tag, Brown said.

As soon as it discovered the problem last spring, the agency issued a memo to tag offices around the state, Brown said, that was to be given to license-tag applicants where plates were unavailable, to serve as a "permission slip" to drive without a current tag.

At least one motorcycle owner in Hutchinson, however, complained of being sent away from the tag office this week and advised not to drive the vehicle until it was tagged, with no promise of when tags might be available.

"That was an error on our part," Miller said, "but I understand it was the only one."

Miller was initially unable to find the memo Wednesday afternoon, but eventually did come up with it and said he ensured all tag agents had a copy.

"New tags are shipping out as we speak," Brown said. "It's just a short-lived crisis."

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.